Watson Creative

Watson Creative Watson Creative is a research-based creative studio. Dig down to build up.

The Tour de France always brings us back to one of the most interesting shoots from Matt’s Nike days.Years ago, around t...
07/23/2026

The Tour de France always brings us back to one of the most interesting shoots from Matt’s Nike days.

Years ago, around the Olympics, Matt was involved in a project connected to Lance Armstrong and the world of elite cycling. His legacy is complicated, and the damage he did to the sport is part of that story. But the creative experience still shaped how Matt understood cycling, performance, and the craft behind making an image feel alive.

What you see here was not CGI. Those speed lines were physical.

The process started with hand illustrations, moved into vector drawings, then shifted into small foam core models to see how the idea behaved in space. From there, the team built a full set inside the Mia Hamm building on Nike’s campus, eventually replacing the foam core with cut acrylic that was strung, hung, lit, adjusted, and studied until it created the right optical effect.

That kind of process still matters. We have extraordinary digital tools now. AI can generate a hundred directions before lunch. But practical effects carry a warmth that is hard to fake: the way light catches a real edge, the shadow you did not plan for, the small imperfection that makes the whole thing feel human.

The studio teaches you things the screen cannot.

It is a lesson we still believe in across design, packaging, retail, content, and brand work: make the idea physical as early as you can. Draw it before you render it. Cut it out before you spec it. Mock up the wall with blue tape. Build the ugly model. Move around it. Let the idea have a body before you ask the computer to make it beautiful.

The tools will keep getting faster. But speed is not the same as understanding. Sometimes the best thing you can do for an idea is slow it down long enough to touch it, test it, break it, rebuild it, and let the material push back.

That friction is not inefficiency. It is where the work starts to tell you what it wants to become.

We’ve had the privilege of working with Microsoft/Xbox on Halo 5: Guardians, the biggest Halo launch in franchise histor...
07/08/2026

We’ve had the privilege of working with Microsoft/Xbox on Halo 5: Guardians, the biggest Halo launch in franchise history, with more than $400 million in global first-week sales of games and hardware.

For that launch, Watson was asked to create a collection of expressive avatars that gave players new ways to show up inside the Halo universe. Bananas, cherries, bunny rabbits, eyeballs, slimers, and all kinds of strange little characters. Some were clean single-line drawings. Some were more illustrated and irreverent. All of them had to live inside a system, with shared palettes, visual logic, and enough connection to the world of Halo to feel intentional.

Halo is a universe built around war, scale, mythology, and intensity. Our job was to bring in a little mischief. A serious world can still have a wink. A massive platform can still make room for personal expression. A game about conflict can still remind people that it is, in fact, a game.

I’m not really a gamer, but as a father, I’ve come to appreciate what games create for kids and their friends: imagination, storytelling, identity, and community. One of my favorite parts of this project came later, when we saw people take the icons and make them their own. Profiles. T-shirts. Little signals of belonging we never could have fully planned for.

07/02/2026


It’s one of our maxims at Watson, and a good thought to carry into America’s 250th.
Here’s to building what comes next, together.

Some images capture a moment. Others capture the cost of taking a stand. This photograph, used in our work with San Jose...
06/19/2026

Some images capture a moment. Others capture the cost of taking a stand. This photograph, used in our work with San Jose State University, comes from the 1967 Cleveland Summit — a gathering of Black athletes and leaders who stood with Muhammad Ali.

For SJSU, Watson partnered on the Institute for the Study of Sport, Society, and Social Change, helping shape a platform rooted in scholarship, athletics, activism, and public responsibility. The Institute’s “Words to Action” work asks a question that feels especially relevant on Juneteenth:

What happens after the words?

Juneteenth reminds us that recognition is not the same as repair. Awareness is not the same as action.

Sport is often framed as escape: the box score, the anthem, the highlight, the roar of the crowd. But sport has also been one of America’s most visible stages for protest, dignity, risk, and change.

Muhammad Ali understood that. So did the athletes who raised their fists on the Olympic podium. Decades later, Colin Kaepernick reminded us that the field is still not separate from the country around it.

Today, learn the history of Juneteenth, listen to the people and institutions doing the work, and support efforts that move equity from language into behavior.

Words to Action.

We’re excited to share the launch of the new website for Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture. Base...
06/05/2026

We’re excited to share the launch of the new website for Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture. Based in Washington, D.C., Field to Market brings together more than 180 member organizations across the agricultural value chain to advance a more sustainable future for U.S. agriculture. Their work is deeply collaborative, deeply technical, and deeply important: translating science, data, and shared measurement into practical progress for farmers, businesses, and the land itself.

Watson Creative's role was to help make that complexity easier to navigate.

The new site gives Field to Market a clearer platform for telling its story, sharing its environmental indicators, supporting members, and connecting people to the tools and resources that move sustainable agriculture from intention to action. It also creates a stronger digital home for the alliance itself, giving members access to shared insights, community, and the kind of collective knowledge that helps the entire field move forward.

Behind the scenes, this was a substantial technical lift. The project involved moving a complex Drupal platform through multiple major version upgrades while preserving existing user, member, and project data. Much of that migration path had to be scripted, tested, refined, and repeated so the new system could carry forward what mattered without dragging the old architecture behind it.

That work is not always visible in the final experience, and that is usually the point. A better platform should feel clearer, faster, more stable, and easier to use, without asking the audience to understand everything it took to get there.

We’re proud of this launch, grateful for the partnership, and genuinely excited for the Field to Market team and its members!

Congratulations to Field to Market.

Local events do more than fill a weekend calendar.They give a place rhythm. They create foot traffic for small businesse...
05/27/2026

Local events do more than fill a weekend calendar.

They give a place rhythm. They create foot traffic for small businesses, visibility for artists, shared memory for residents, and a reason for visitors to experience a city through something more human than a search result.

You see it clearly in places like Bend during its Summer Festival, where a few of us at Watson are based, and in towns and cities everywhere.

The best events aren’t just programmed. They’re positioned. They know who they’re for, what makes the place distinct, and how the experience should feel before, during and after a visit.

That’s where brand strategy and community experience meet.

A festival may last a few days, but the perception it builds can last much longer. Our work around festivals and events is some of the most creative and rewarding work we do, and we're grateful for every chance we get to help make someone's city or town celebrate what makes it unique.

05/25/2026

Travel is often described in emotional terms.
The trip. The view. The meal. The weekend away. The thing you still talk about a year later.

But behind every strong destination brand is something more structural: economic development, small business visibility, community identity, seasonal planning, visitor behavior, and a story that gives people a reason to choose one place over another.
That is why destination branding is never just about making a place look appealing.

It has to help people understand what makes the place distinct.
It has to serve visitors without flattening the people who live there.
It has to create momentum for local businesses, cultural institutions, hospitality partners, and civic leaders who all experience the brand differently.

Our work across destination, tourism, hospitality, and cultural brands has taught us that the strongest place brands are not invented from scratch. They are uncovered, organized, and expressed with care.

A place already has a truth.
The work is making it easier to find, feel, and remember.

Small businesses get called “scrappy,” “local,” “passionate.” Accurate, maybe. But not a brand platform.The best ones ac...
05/15/2026

Small businesses get called “scrappy,” “local,” “passionate.” Accurate, maybe. But not a brand platform.
The best ones act like challenger brands early. Pick a lane. Make tradeoffs. Decide what they’re not.

This is National Small Business Week. A good moment to ask:
When someone encounters your business for the first time: what’s unmistakably clear? What still requires interpretation?

That gap is where the work lives.

05/13/2026

Watson made the Top 100 fastest-growing agencies in Portland. Second year in a row.

13 years ago, this started in a drafty attic. Since then: brand strategy, naming, campaigns, destinations, healthcare, sports and a few things that never fit neatly on a spreadsheet.

Growth isn’t magic. It’s trust, repeated. Better questions, harder conversations, and one sentence doing what six couldn’t.

To everyone who’s been part of it: thank you.

May is Oregon Wine Month.The bottle may get the attention, but the brand is built everywhere else.On the drive up.In the...
05/04/2026

May is Oregon Wine Month.

The bottle may get the attention, but the brand is built everywhere else.
On the drive up.
In the tasting room.
In the ease (or friction) involved in joining.

And especially, it gets built in the conversations that occur during and after a visit.

That's a big lift for wine brands, having to articulate agriculture, craft, hospitality, and a sense of place all at once. It's what makes the category compelling, and such a great creative challenge.

A strong label and a clean website help, but they can't carry the experience all on their own. If the system doesn’t hold together, neither will the story. Across wine, hospitality and destination brands, the pattern is consistent: every touchpoint adds something or takes something away. As with most things, that's where the beauty and and challenge play off one another.

Happy Oregon Wine Month 🍷

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